Inside The Cockpit: The Final Words Of AI-171 Pilots Before The Crash

New Delhi: In the final moments of Air India Flight AI-171, the cockpit turned from routine procedure to sheer confusion in seconds. The Boeing 787-8, carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members, had just lifted off from Ahmedabad airport en route to London Gatwick. What happened next left no room for recovery.

According to the cockpit voice recorder analysed by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), the first sign of something going terribly wrong came seconds after takeoff. Both engines — critical for thrust and climb — suddenly lost power. The thrust levers remained forward, but both fuel control switches had been moved from ‘RUN’ to ‘CUTOFF’, cutting off the fuel supply mid-air.

Critical Cockpit Exchange Between The Two Pilots

What stunned investigators was the exchange between the two pilots, captured clearly on the recorder:

Pilot 1: “Why did you cut off?”

Pilot 2: “I didn’t.”

Those four words — exchanged as the aircraft began losing altitude — reveal a moment of immediate confusion and disbelief in the cockpit. Neither pilot appeared to have intentionally shut down the engines. And both were struggling to understand why the engines had stopped delivering thrust at the most critical stage of flight.

With the aircraft now descending rapidly, systems began triggering emergency responses. The Ram Air Turbine (RAT) deployed automatically, the auxiliary power unit (APU) auto-started, and the pilots moved both fuel switches back to RUN to relight the engines. One engine showed signs of recovery. The other did not.

But there was no time left.

At 08:09 UTC, just 30 seconds after liftoff, one of the pilots made a desperate transmission:

“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.”

It was the last communication from AI-171. Moments later, the plane crashed into the BJ Medical College hostel complex, just 0.9 nautical miles from the end of the runway.

The chilling exchange — “Why did you cut off?” / “I didn’t” — has become central to the ongoing investigation. It suggests either inadvertent human input, a switch malfunction, or a design flaw in the locking mechanism of the fuel switches. The aircraft was equipped with the same part flagged in a 2018 US safety bulletin for possible disengagement issues — a recommendation that had never been acted upon.

As investigators continue piecing together the final seconds of AI-171, this brief but haunting cockpit dialogue stands as the clearest window into a disaster that unfolded too quickly for anyone to stop.